sun that has pretentions to civilization, is there an approach to such a system of organized waste and plunder! It is a system which writes CORRUPTION on the brow of the oligarchy in characters of flame!

Do we say, that every act of the government so constituted is bad? Far from it. The burgh-holders have many interests in common with the people. Good laws, good police, protection to industry, benefit them along with others; but their general interest as subjects and tax payers, is frequently small in proportion to their special and sinister interest as tax-eaters and sharers of place and patronage. It is this which carries a taint into every part of the system.

But had the people no influence in the House of Commons and upon the government? Unquestionably they had some; and we shall explain what it was. First, They return a few members to Parliament directly, through populous open burghs, such as Westminster, Norwich, Southwark, Preston, &c. Second, Intestine divisions among the oligarchy induced some burgh-holders to espouse the people's cause from jealousy or disappointed ambition, and generous feelings move others. Third, They have the agency of the press, and public meetings, though not undivided. The democratic force in Britain, the influence of the people, consists in the power of arguing, expostulating, and protesting by a fractional part of the representation against an overpowering majority, within Parliament, and of petitioning, clamouring, and threatening, without. In small matters, as in a trifling tax or a regulation respecting trade, the oligarchy now and then yielded to the growlers within and without, and granted what they were perfectly able to refuse if they had chosen; and then the Peels, and Bankes, and Cannings, affect extreme astonishment, and ask, who will be so bold as say, that the voice of the people has no influence in Parliament! At other times, when the people are very clamorous, and the propriety of conceding is not felt, the cry is raised to "make a stand" to "save the Constitution;" and then follow bills to disarm the people, bills to prevent them from holding meetings, bills to suppress cheap publications, with suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, and all the other instruments of coercion and terror, to silence the voice of those whose organ Parliament ought to be. By the people

here, we do not mean merely the working classes; but these in connection with the middle ranks, and such of the upper as are not directly interested in the oligarchical monopoly of power. Had the opinions of these classes been taken by ballot, when the Six Bills were proposed in 1819, we firmly believe, though wild doctrines were then afloat, that the bills would have been rejected by a majority of six to one.

A few years ago, what we are now writing would possibly have been visited as sedition. At this day it cannot possibly be regarded as such; for the legislature, by passing the Reform Bills, has proclaimed to the world, that corruption of the most flagrant nature existed in the British Constitution. Indeed, one of the very best marks of a truly free and popular government is, that it needs neither to tie the tongues nor the hands of its subjects, that it can afford to indulge all who live under it in the luxury of speaking treason and sedition every day! There is but one government in the world that has stood this, as it has proudly stood every other test of purity and faithfulness ; we mean that of the United States. Since its true principles were called into action by the republican party in 1801, no man has ever been prosecuted for words spoken or written against the State. Yet perhaps a year has never passed since that time, without some two or three among its thousand orators, and thousand journalists, declaring publicly in unqualified terms, that the federal government was a most infamous tyranny, and should be pulled down by force! We know that such statements were openly made in 1813, when an enemy was at the gates. Why is no Attorney-General put in motion against the libellers ? Because the government sits secure, anchored in the affections of the people, and laughs at liberties of speech which would throw our oligarchs into an agony of terror.

What a lesson does the political history of this country teach, since the French war, begun in 1795? From that time down to 1822, a period of twenty-seven years, we had at short intervals a perpetual succession of Insurrection Bills, Seditious Meetings Bills, Disarming Bills, Blasphemous and Seditious Libel Bills, and Habeas Corpus Suspension Bills! For more than a third of that period the boasted liberties of Britain, the maintenance of which is the very end of our government, had no existence! Every

three or four years our ministers were "saving the constitution," that is, they were hanging some few poor creatures, and banishing some scores or hundreds more, to avoid the necessity of reforming parliament.* If the facts of that eventful period were submitted to some powerful and elevated mind, unbiassed by our passions, to a Montesquieu or a Locke, what judgment would he pronounce? He would say, that during these years, there was a sort of civil war between the oligarchy and the people, a long and inveterate struggle, in which the one contended for their natural rights, and the other for their acquired privileges, and in which the dominant party, instead of yielding to the just demands of the other, silenced its complaints by force and terror. We would put a few questions to any candid liberal Tory. First, Whether such a reform as the legislature have now passed, might not have been safely granted in 1796, even admitting that many reformers then entertained visionary notions? Second, Supposing it had been then granted, whether the suspension of the Constitution for one-third of the long period referred to, with all its dismal consequences, of insecurity, alarm, commercial distress, bitter intestine divisions, imprisonments, and banishments without number, and not a few sanguinary executions,-nay, whether the Irish rebellion, with its bloody and disgraceful scenes,-might not have been avoided? Third, Whether in these circumstances, all the cruel inroads alluded to on the properties, liberties, and happiness of the people, were not a heavy and unnecessary evil inflicted on us by the pride, cupidity, and injustice of the burgh-holders? We say then with confi

• It is another beautiful trait in the history of the American government, that it has never shed a drop of human blood, nor banished a single individual for state crimes! No renegade minister grows immortal there by "saving the constitution," and and crushing the "hydra of Jacobinism," at the expense of human blood and human happiness. It is delightful to find, that the more popular a government grows, the milder it becomes; and that the glory of dispensing with the services of the hangman in political affairs, was reserved for the first government erected and conducted by the people ;-by those whom the planners of our bloody treason and sedition laws chose to designate as 66 a ferocious rabble!"

dence, that our domestic troubles for the last thirty-five years have all been the consequences of a struggle between the oligarchy and the people, in which the latter were certain ultimately to prevail; we say, too, that these troubles would have been prevented, had the burgh-holders made concessions to the people in 1796; and we say, that unless the Reform Bills had been carried, we must have looked to an interminable renewal of the same evils, or to convulsions which it is fearful to contemplate.

Scotsman.

SECTION III.

BRITISH ARISTOCRACY, AND THE HOUSE OF PEERS.

BEFORE entering on the more serious details of our present subject, we cannot help pausing a moment, on the threshold, to felicitate ourselves and readers on the triumphs already achieved by the progress of knowledge. Three centuries are only a step in the history of nations, yet, within that period, how many fictions of feudality and priestcraft have been dissipated, and which are now only reverted to as sources of amusement, like the delusions of witchcraft and demonology. Only think of the supremacy of the clergy in the fifteenth century, when they enjoyed almost impunity for every crime, by exemption from the secular jurisdiction. It strikingly demonstrates the influence of mind over ignorance; for ecclesiastics, at that era, as much excelled the laity in mental attainments as in the magnitude of their possessions. Such pre-eminence is either lost or fast disappearing; in science and information they are manifestly behind other classes of the community; their moral influence is insignificant; the chief advantages they retain are their revenues, and the permanent enjoyment of these not being founded on any claim of right or social utility, public conviction has long since decreed against them, and the general verdict waits only to be carried into execution.

Among the fictions of regality, the most preposterous

was the claim of divine right, which has become too common-place a drollary even for mirth. Still it cannot be forgotten, that so recently as the last of the Stuarts, this dogma had many disciples, and some remains of this singular faith are now to be found. An attempt has been made to erect a new idol in the pretensions of legitimacy: but, in an age of discussion, imposture cannot long maintain its ground, and this was soon trampled under foot. Previously to the introduction of this idolatry, the British had shown their contempt for hereditary right, by the transfer of the crown to the Prince of Orange; the French, by their choice of a patriot king in the person of Philip I.; and the non-interference of the European powers in the mighty movement of 1830, has put an everlasting seal on this species of secular superstition.

Let us next advert to the fictions of the third estate :by some accident, the British Aristocracy have contrived to retain a greater proportion of their ancient endowments than any other privileged order of the community. How has this happened? We shall try to explain. First, The British nobility had the good sense to give up in time a portion of their more revolting usurpations, by which they have been enabled to preserve entire, in a more palmy state of enjoyment, and for a longer term, the remainder, than any similar class in Europe. Second, At an early period of our annals, they obtained a hold on popular support, by aiding the people in resisting the encroachments of the clergy, and the prerogatives of the crown. And latterly, they have contrived-a portion of them at least to delude a considerable number of superficial, but influential people, with a profession of liberal principles, and to persuade them that there is between them a community of object and advantages. However, all these sources of influence are losing their power. For what services the Aristocracy ever rendered to public liberty they have long since been paid a hundred-fold. Their pretext of identity of interest or principle, with any section of society, has been fully exposed; so that, we conclude, the proper period has arrived for calling upon them to produce the charter of the immunities they still retain. Like other privileged classes, they have been compelled to surrender some of their pretensions, and the era, we appre